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Community Voice #5: Player-Made Content
With the release of ModNation Racers, kart-racing fans across the globe are living in a glee-ful world of player-made tracks, characters, and karts. The upcoming release of Joe Danger sees a completely new way for players to make their own tracks and is already receiving critical praise. LittleBigPlanet won a Game of the Year or two and the sequel promises more of the same. Wario DIY is basically nothing but creation. Is content creation the wave of the future? Is it the new multiplayer? A concept that will be tacked on to every game sooner or later, for better or worse? Naturally this is an older concept than just this year, and some of my fondest PC gaming memories are playing player-made modules for Neverwinter Nights, but it is a newer concept to the console, and because of that is seeing an explosion in interest level among gamers. What are your thoughts on player-creation based games? Would you rather companies focus more on creating an experience for you, or creating the opportunity for you to craft your own?
What is The Community Voice? The Community Voice is your chance to make yourself heard on Spawn Kill. Yes, you can leave comments on any post that we have, but The Community Voice is a weekly feature that is notorious for encouraging discussion and fostering a sense of, yes, community. We want to hear from readers of the site, and we want to talk to you. So let us know your opinions on the topics each week and let’s get something lively going!
I'm really enjoying the creation tools in ModNation Racers. This really is something to be enjoyed. I can't believe how much user content has come up in the last couple of weeks. There's a lot of bad in with the good, but the nice part is, it's free content. I like being able to play on new tracks, and with new characters and karts for free. I mean if you don't like it, you can easily delete it…unlike paid content they you may regret in games.
I've been looking forward to getting more into the creation part of the game. Feel free to check out my stuff down the road.
PSN: Mag1z
I hope it's not because they're running out of ideas, because I can't stand games that focus on making your own content. I don't MIND playing other funny things made by other players but when it comes to me being responsible to create, I get bored easily…
It should be an important balance betwixt player-created content and premium, developer-developed content. Enabling players to tweak, change, and in many cases improve the core game drastically extends the lifetime of a game. Hell, NWN was released in 2002 and people are still modding it.
What is highly frustrating to me, as a PC gamer is when the consoles adopt a prime tenant of PC gaming and it's hailed as the “best thing evaar.” We've been modding games since the '70s, creating buckets of new content for old and contemporary titles.
We'll see how it turns out on the consoles. More than likely it will die out down the road since there isn't a real platform for easily modifying the game mechanics. Sure, you can create a sexy new outfit or a kinky track for a racer, but can you mod the underlying code? We can.
I think LBP has shown that you don't need to mod the code itself to create something impressive, as as interfaces for this stuff get better and better there's no reason the console stuff can't be just as good as the PC stuff has been.
Sure it can be something impressive….within the confines of the game and its inherent ruleset. With PC mods, people can change the fundamental operations of the games.
I'm simply saying that it feels a whole lot like a “hot trend” rather than a legitimate innovation.
I hate 98% of player created content.. It's not professional, not detailed, not balanced, and usually just very very lacking… Don't get me wrong, there is great player created content out there, but most player-created content isn't up to par with professional content.
This is true, and mostly because of the ease of publishing one's content. You can literally throw one tree into a level in most games, then publish it up. It's hard to filter through the good and bad, and though games generally have some kind of rating system set up, how do you even find the good games to rate them? A better system of publishing and…I dunno, advertising, would go a long way in helping relieve this problem.